But I was assured that because TLJ didn't outgross The Avengers in its first 40 minutes of release, it's the biggest box office failure since Pluto Nash and everyone at Disney is looking for a rope and a rafter.

I saw it last week. It was a little uneven in its story telling and there were a whole shirtload of plot holes but over all it was pretty good, better than The Force Awakens. This biggest sin was one of my biggest pet peeves with movies, people acting boneheaded stupid for no other reason than to advance the plot. But even with all that I still enjoyed it. Mark Hamill farking nailed it.

The funny thing was, after it was all over I realized that no matter where you are on the political/social spectrum, if you were the type of person who loves to get offended by everything there was something in the movie you could probably easily work yourself into a lather over. Left, right, feminist, MRA, it wouldn't take a lot of effort to fall on your fainting couch over something "problematic" in the film.

I think the biggest shock of the film was when they revealed that Snoke was Willrow Hood. Totally did not see that one coming.

Impossible! Anonymous farkers on the internet have assured me that this movie is awful, that no one is going to see it, and that Disney is quietly firing everyone that had anything to do with Star Wars because this movie was tanking so badly.

chuggernaught:Impossible! Anonymous farkers on the internet have assured me that this movie is awful, that no one is going to see it, and that Disney is quietly firing everyone that had anything to do with Star Wars because this movie was tanking so badly.

/yes, seriously. I have seen these claims.

Disney has the top 2 grossing movies of the year, pulling in more than $2.25 billion so far, not counting a shiatload of product tie-ins and merchandising.

Those "mass firings" are more likely "huge bonuses for execs and all the cocaine and hookers they can handle."

Being different is fine. Being different for the sake of being different is not.

TLJ's problems aren't that it was different, it was that it pretzel-logicked itself into incoherence and red herring purgatgory in its undying quest to be different. And it wants us to appreciate it for that stupid fact alone (hence the crying mantra of TLJ fanboy: It subverts expectations! As if that automatically means good).

It's as if Rian Johnson read every single fan theory on the Internet and then deliberately wrote a script that did not satisfy a single one. Or he read TV tropes and was trying to avoid using any of them (which isn't possible and you shouldn't try to do that anyway. Tropes are not bad, they're just storytelling tools). It's almost filmmaking by spite.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: TFA tried so hard to be good that it forgot to be different, while TLJ tried so hard to be different that it forgot to be good.

Being different is fine. Being different for the sake of being different is not.

TLJ's problems aren't that it was different, it was that it pretzel-logicked itself into incoherence and red herring purgatgory in its undying quest to be different. And it wants us to appreciate it for that stupid fact alone (hence the crying mantra of TLJ fanboy: It subverts expectations! As if that automatically means good).

It's as if Rian Johnson read every single fan theory on the Internet and then deliberately wrote a script that did not satisfy a single one. Or he read TV tropes and was trying to avoid using any of them (which isn't possible and you shouldn't try to do that anyway. Tropes are not bad, they're just storytelling tools). It's almost filmmaking by spite.

I've said this before and I'll say it again: TFA tried so hard to be good that it forgot to be different, while TLJ tried so hard to be different that it forgot to be good.

considering how pants on head dumb 99% of fan theories are, I'd call that one of the movie's strengths.

stoli n coke:considering how pants on head dumb 99% of fan theories are, I'd call that one of the movie's strengths.

You can certainly go too far in the other direction. Sure some fan theories will be out-and-out stupid. Others will just be logical extensions of what has been seen so far. If you reject all of them in order to subvert expectations, then you can easily end up painting yourself into a corner where the only way out is illogical plot points.

See: Battlestar Galactica

/Haven't seen TLJ, so I have no opinion on if that movie falls into that trap.

eiger:You can certainly go too far in the other direction. Sure some fan theories will be out-and-out stupid. Others will just be logical extensions of what has been seen so far. If you reject all of them in order to subvert expectations, then you can easily end up painting yourself into a corner where the only way out is illogical plot points.

That is in fact exactly what TLJ did. And it's a pretty cogent observation from someone who hasn't seen it.

stoli n coke:But I was assured that because TLJ didn't outgross The Avengers in its first 40 minutes of release, it's the biggest box office failure since Pluto Nash and everyone at Disney is looking for a rope and a rafter.

Revenge of the Sith, an execrable mess that finished three awful films, made 850M on a 115M budget.

eiger:stoli n coke: considering how pants on head dumb 99% of fan theories are, I'd call that one of the movie's strengths.

You can certainly go too far in the other direction. Sure some fan theories will be out-and-out stupid. Others will just be logical extensions of what has been seen so far. If you reject all of them in order to subvert expectations, then you can easily end up painting yourself into a corner where the only way out is illogical plot points.

See: Battlestar Galactica

/Haven't seen TLJ, so I have no opinion on if that movie falls into that trap.

See also: LOST.

The writers panicked when the fans nailed that they were in purgatory by episode 3.

Ghastly:This text is now purple: It's hard making an unprofitable Star Wars film.

That's what Hollywood Accountants are for. Never been a film they couldn't make unprofitable on paper.

Yep, spend $115 million to actually make the movie, take in $800 million at the box office, and the net return will be -$163 million... and a sequel will be planned. And they will somehow convince everyone involved in the original to, once again, take a share of the net instead of a bigger salary to lower the production costs.

Ghastly:I saw it last week. It was a little uneven in its story telling and there were a whole shirtload of plot holes but over all it was pretty good, better than The Force Awakens. This biggest sin was one of my biggest pet peeves with movies, people acting boneheaded stupid for no other reason than to advance the plot. But even with all that I still enjoyed it. Mark Hamill farking nailed it.

The funny thing was, after it was all over I realized that no matter where you are on the political/social spectrum, if you were the type of person who loves to get offended by everything there was something in the movie you could probably easily work yourself into a lather over. Left, right, feminist, MRA, it wouldn't take a lot of effort to fall on your fainting couch over something "problematic" in the film.

I think the biggest shock of the film was when they revealed that Snoke was Willrow Hood. Totally did not see that one coming.

My only problem with it was the casino sequence ground the pacing to a stop. Everything with Rey, Luke, and Kylo was excellent, though.

ClavellBCMI:Ghastly: This text is now purple: It's hard making an unprofitable Star Wars film.

That's what Hollywood Accountants are for. Never been a film they couldn't make unprofitable on paper.

Yep, spend $115 million to actually make the movie, take in $800 million at the box office, and the net return will be -$163 million... and a sequel will be planned. And they will somehow convince everyone involved in the original to, once again, take a share of the net instead of a bigger salary to lower the production costs.

Net profits have been called "sucker points" since the mid-60s. Anyone still dumb enough to agree to them shouldn't act surprised.

Tyrone Slothrop:Ghastly: I saw it last week. It was a little uneven in its story telling and there were a whole shirtload of plot holes but over all it was pretty good, better than The Force Awakens. This biggest sin was one of my biggest pet peeves with movies, people acting boneheaded stupid for no other reason than to advance the plot. But even with all that I still enjoyed it. Mark Hamill farking nailed it.

The funny thing was, after it was all over I realized that no matter where you are on the political/social spectrum, if you were the type of person who loves to get offended by everything there was something in the movie you could probably easily work yourself into a lather over. Left, right, feminist, MRA, it wouldn't take a lot of effort to fall on your fainting couch over something "problematic" in the film.

I think the biggest shock of the film was when they revealed that Snoke was Willrow Hood. Totally did not see that one coming.

My only problem with it was the casino sequence ground the pacing to a stop. Everything with Rey, Luke, and Kylo was excellent, though.

Finn's entire plot point was stupid. Had everything worked out as planned, it would have accomplished nothing. It was all just motion for the sake of motion.

This text is now purple:Tyrone Slothrop: Ghastly: I saw it last week. It was a little uneven in its story telling and there were a whole shirtload of plot holes but over all it was pretty good, better than The Force Awakens. This biggest sin was one of my biggest pet peeves with movies, people acting boneheaded stupid for no other reason than to advance the plot. But even with all that I still enjoyed it. Mark Hamill farking nailed it.

The funny thing was, after it was all over I realized that no matter where you are on the political/social spectrum, if you were the type of person who loves to get offended by everything there was something in the movie you could probably easily work yourself into a lather over. Left, right, feminist, MRA, it wouldn't take a lot of effort to fall on your fainting couch over something "problematic" in the film.

I think the biggest shock of the film was when they revealed that Snoke was Willrow Hood. Totally did not see that one coming.

My only problem with it was the casino sequence ground the pacing to a stop. Everything with Rey, Luke, and Kylo was excellent, though.

Finn's entire plot point was stupid. Had everything worked out as planned, it would have accomplished nothing. It was all just motion for the sake of motion.

It felt like Johnson didn't really know what to do with the character. And given that there was evidently no overall direction from Abrahms about where the trilogy was supposed to go, that's not surprising.

This text is now purple:stoli n coke: But I was assured that because TLJ didn't outgross The Avengers in its first 40 minutes of release, it's the biggest box office failure since Pluto Nash and everyone at Disney is looking for a rope and a rafter.

Revenge of the Sith, an execrable mess that finished three awful films, made 850M on a 115M budget.

I'll be sitting right here as some people start screeching about Hollywood budgets and how this just proves that the movie bombed blah blah masculinity so weak a woman with an opinion can upend it blah blah.

That's actually my main problem with the movie. There's a difference between listening to audience feedback and typing your script with another window continually open to Reddit so you can obsessively put your responses to every internet argument directly into the screenplay. It basically ended up being derivative of an internet comment thread instead of of another movie, which I think might be worse.

If he'd just been like "all right, different, I can do that" and gone in a different direction that would have been great. The entire script being a shouted argument with the first movie and an imaginary heckler in the audience, however, kind of spoils a lot of the fun of what would otherwise be a perfectly enjoyable brainless action flick, y'know?

It's hard to get any more specific than that without going full spoilers. It's also hard to pin down exactly what's wrong with the film while watching it because it's mostly failures of execution, not failures of concept. The action-movie genre overflows with films that have too many pointless sub-plots and make it work (LotR), films that introduce random Very Important Characters Who Were Totally Being Important Just Off Screen The Whole Last Movie, Guys and make it work (The Marvel films), films whose entire plot only works because every single character from the heroes to the villains to the background characters are so mind-numbingly stupid that in real life they'd die of starvation from forgetting how eating works (Terminator, Die Hard, etc) and made it work just fine. That Last Jedi wasn't really doing anything that hasn't worked before and dropped the ball on the execution (because of the aforementioned arguing with the imagined audience) is part of why I think it's catching a bit more shiat from audiences than it strictly speaking deserves.

Honestly, I don't think the flak TLJ is getting is about it being bad on its own merits, it's more about it being mediocre. All the problems that it exhibits are the kinds of things that are characteristic of a neophyte writer and first time director (which in fairness is very close to being the actual situation here, this is the guy's... third movie? And second anyone ever actually watched) and characteristic of forgettable, generic action blockbusters. This is almost worse than being outright bad, honestly. Actual hatred is still an emotional reaction, but the audience being like "eh, it was fine, I guess" is a pretty strong 'beginning of the end' signal for a long-running series. This is probably why disney has been trying really hard to push the "zomg childhood ruined" people into the foreground in their spin to cover for things like the low RT score. Most of the negative press isn't wailing and gnashing of teeth, it's mostly "well, I don't want the last three hours of my life back or anything... but I wouldn't really feel compelled to watch the next one if it wasn't literally my job".

// I'd actually argue that Disney already saw the writing on the wall with rogue 1, which had a similar "hey, that was pretty good... I guess. You'll like it if you like star wars or whatever" tone even in most of the positive reviews. This is why it has a pretty normal 'action franchise tentpole' budget of around 200m and didn't get Justice League money thrown at it. The company is doing most of its risk-taking with the Marvel properties right now, SW is much more firmly within the same "make it good enough and go no further" space as most of the mouse's other productions.

That's actually my main problem with the movie. There's a difference between listening to audience feedback and typing your script with another window continually open to Reddit so you can obsessively put your responses to every internet argument directly into the screenplay. It basically ended up being derivative of an internet comment thread instead of of another movie, which I think might be worse.

If he'd just been like "all right, different, I can do that" and gone in a different direction that would have been great. The entire script being a shouted argument with the first movie and an imaginary heckler in the audience, however, kind of spoils a lot of the fun of what would otherwise be a perfectly enjoyable brainless action flick, y'know?

It's hard to get any more specific than that without going full spoilers. It's also hard to pin down exactly what's wrong with the film while watching it because it's mostly failures of execution, not failures of concept. The action-movie genre overflows with films that have too many pointless sub-plots and make it work (LotR), films that introduce random Very Important Characters Who Were Totally Being Important Just Off Screen The Whole Last Movie, Guys and make it work (The Marvel films), films whose entire plot only works because every single character from the heroes to the villains to the background characters are so mind-numbingly stupid that in real life they'd die of starvation from forgetting how eating works (Terminator, Die Hard, etc) and made it work just fine. That Last Jedi wasn't really doing anything that hasn't worked before and dropped the ball on the execution (because of the aforementioned arguing with the imagined audience) is part of why I think it's catching a bit more shiat from audiences than it strictly speaking deserves.

Honestly, I don't think the flak TLJ is getting is about it being bad on its own merits, it's more about it being mediocre. All the problems that it exhibits are the kinds of things that are characteristic of a neophyte writer and first time director (which in fairness is very close to being the actual situation here, this is the guy's... third movie? And second anyone ever actually watched) and characteristic of forgettable, generic action blockbusters. This is almost worse than being outright bad, honestly. Actual hatred is still an emotional reaction, but the audience being like "eh, it was fine, I guess" is a pretty strong 'beginning of the end' signal for a long-running series. This is probably why disney has been trying really hard to push the "zomg childhood ruined" people into the foreground in their spin to cover for things like the low RT score. Most of the negative press isn't wailing and gnashing of teeth, it's mostly "well, I don't want the last three hours of my life back or anything... but I wouldn't really feel compelled to watch the next one if it wasn't literally my job".

// I'd actually argue that Disney already saw the writing on the wall with rogue 1, which had a similar "hey, that was pretty good... I guess. You'll like it if you like star wars or whatever" tone even in most of the positive reviews. This is why it has a pretty normal 'action franchise tentpole' budget of around 200m and didn't get Justice League money thrown at it. The company is doing most of its risk-taking with the Marvel properties right now, SW is much more firmly within the same "make it good enough and go no further" space as most of the mouse's other productions.

I just watched Rogue One again this weekend. Holy crap, that movie was amazing. It gets better every time I watch it. The universe looks lived-in again, instead of CGI polished. And if you get over that it's not about any main characters we've met before (save Mon Mothma, who's in it pretty substantially), it sets up everything we ever need to know about the Rebellion, and actually shows how desperate their situation was.

Ghastly:I saw it last week. It was a little uneven in its story telling and there were a whole shirtload of plot holes but over all it was pretty good, better than The Force Awakens. This biggest sin was one of my biggest pet peeves with movies, people acting boneheaded stupid for no other reason than to advance the plot. But even with all that I still enjoyed it. Mark Hamill farking nailed it.

The funny thing was, after it was all over I realized that no matter where you are on the political/social spectrum, if you were the type of person who loves to get offended by everything there was something in the movie you could probably easily work yourself into a lather over. Left, right, feminist, MRA, it wouldn't take a lot of effort to fall on your fainting couch over something "problematic" in the film.

I think the biggest shock of the film was when they revealed that Snoke was Willrow Hood. Totally did not see that one coming.

Fano:Confabulat: Let's face it, most of the anger about Last Jedi boils down to "I'm not 13 years old anymore and that shiat doesn't play for me at 50 but it should and so I'm MAD!"

That's a lot, then kids who grew up on the Prequels and feel swindled of their childhood compared to a generation getting good Star Wars again

The kids who grew up on the prequels are in their 30s now. Funny how it's only old men who think it's a special magic series. Most people understand it's a cheesy but fun movie chain, that doesn't require fury cause a character dies in ways they don't approve. But old men, well you know exactly how they are.